Recently Received Riveting Reads: November 2017
Selective list of new fiction recently received
New Fiction
- American Drifter byCall Number: F GrahamISBN: 9780765374875Publication Date: 2017-11-14A young veteran of the US Army, River Roulet is struggling to shake the horrors of his past. War is behind him, but the memories remain. Desperate to distract himself from the images haunting him daily, River abandons the world he knows and flees to the country he's always dreamed of visiting: Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is everything he hoped for and more. With a few friends at his side, River seems to be pulling his life together at last.
- The Armageddon File byCall Number: F CoontsISBN: 9781621576594Publication Date: 2017-11-06After one of the most contentious and divisive elections in American history, the new president is finally settling into the West Wing. But when his chief of staff discovers evidence that voting machines in key counties in swing states were tampered with, the whole administration is in danger of unraveling. Did someone steal the election? Are America's enemies involved? Were the tampered-with machines actually rigged to swing the election the other way--and if so and the plot failed, what is the conspirators' backup plan?
- A Darker Sea byCall Number: F HaleyISBN: 9780399171116Publication Date: 2017-11-14The second installment of the gripping naval saga by award-winning historian James L. Haley, featuring Commander Bliven Putnam, chronicling the build up to the biggest military conflict between the United States and Britain after the Revolution--the War of 1812.
- Displaced byCall Number: F AbarbanellISBN: 9780062484475Publication Date: 2017-11-07British-occupied Palestine, 1946: Elderly writer Elias Lind isn't convinced by reports that his scientist brother, Raphael, died in a concentration camp. Too frail to search for Raphael himself, Elias persuades a contact in the Jewish resistance to send someone in his place. Lilya joined the resistance movement to help form a new state, not to waste her time on a fruitless chase. As her comrades make their final preparations for a major operation, a bitter Lilya must accept her orders and embark on her journey to Europe.
- Freya byCall Number: F QuinnISBN: 9781609454159Publication Date: 2017-11-07It begins on May 8th, 1945. The streets of London are alive with VE-Day celebrations. In the crowd, twenty-year-old Freya Wyley meets eighteen-year-old Nancy Holdaway. Freya's acerbic wit and free-wheeling politics complement Nancy's gentle, less self-confident nature, and what begins on that eventful day in history is the story of a devoted and competitive friendship that spans two decades.
- Heather, the Totality byCall Number: F WeinerISBN: 9780316435314Publication Date: 2017-11-07Mark and Karen Breakstone have constructed the idyllic life of wealth and status they always wanted, made complete by their beautiful daughter Heather. But they are still not quite at the top. When the new owners of the penthouse above them begin construction, an unstable stranger penetrates the security of their comfortable lives and threatens to destroy everything they've created.
- Improvement byCall Number: F SilberISBN: 9781619029606Publication Date: 2017-11-14Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn't perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three-month stint at Rikers Island, their bond grows tighter. Kiki admires her niece's spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that Boyd is pulling Reyna into a cigarette smuggling scheme, across state lines, where he could risk violating probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four-year-old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.
- Lost Luggage byCall Number: F ThomasISBN: 9781464208928Publication Date: 2017-10-03Cyd Redondo, a young, third-generation Brooklyn travel agent who specializes in senior citizens, has never ventured farther than New Jersey. Yet even Jersey proves risky when her Travel Agents' Convention fling, Roger Claymore, leaves her weak in the knees-and everywhere else-then sneaks out of her Atlantic City hotel room at three a.m. Back in Brooklyn, when she reads about smugglers stopped at JFK with skinks in their socks or monkeys down their pants, she never imagines she will join their ranks.
- Madonna in a Fur Coat byCall Number: F SabahattinISBN: 9780241206195Publication Date: 2016-01-01A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin. There, amid the city's bustling streets, elegant museums, passionate politics and seedy cabarets, a chance meeting transforms his life for ever. Caught between his desire for freedom and his yearning to belong, he struggles to hold on to the new life he has found.
- Mrs. Caliban byCall Number: F IngallsISBN: 9780811226691Publication Date: 2017-11-28In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research... Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls's Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe's stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates's domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter.
- The Noël Diary byCall Number: F EvansISBN: 9781501172038Publication Date: 2017-11-07Bestselling romance author Jacob Churcher hasn't been home for almost twenty years-- not since his mentally ill mother kicked him out of the house when he was just sixteen. When a lawyer calls, days before Christmas, to inform him that his estranged mother has passed away and left her house to him, Jacob returns not just to settle the estate but to try and reconcile with the past and the pain and abuse he experienced as a child.
- Poison byCall Number: F NiederhofferISBN: 9781250085290Publication Date: 2017-11-21Cass and Ryan Connor have achieved family nirvana. Their family, has recently moved to Portland --a new start for their new lives. Cass and Ryan have stable, successful careers, and they are happy. But trouble begins almost imperceptibly. First with small omissions and white lies that happen daily in any marital bedroom. They seem insignificant, but they are quickly followed by a series of denials and feints that mushroom and then cyclone in menace.
- Radio Free Vermont byCall Number: F McKibbenISBN: 9780735219861Publication Date: 2017-11-07Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic. As the host of Radio Free Vermont---seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy.
- The Story of Arthur Truluv byCall Number: F BergISBN: 9781400069903Publication Date: 2017-11-21For the past six months, Arthur Moses's days have looked the same: He tends to his rose garden and to Gordon, his cat, then rides the bus to the cemetery to visit his beloved late wife for lunch. Eighteen-year-old Maddy Harris is an introspective girl who visits the cemetery to escape the other kids at school. One afternoon she joins Arthur--a gesture that begins a surprising friendship between two lonely souls. As Arthur's neighbor Lucille moves into their orbit, they band together and help one another rediscover their own potential to start anew.
- Typhoon Fury byCall Number: F CusslerISBN: 9780399575570Publication Date: 2017-11-07Hired to search for a collection of paintings worth half a billion dollars, Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon soon find themselves in much deeper waters. The vicious leader of a Filipino insurgency is not only using them to finance his attacks, he has stumbled upon one of the most lethal secrets of World War II: a Japanese-developed drug, designed, but never used, to turn soldiers into super-warriors.
- Wonder Valley byCall Number: F PochodaISBN: 9780062656353Publication Date: 2017-11-07When a teen runs away from his father's mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row.
New Fiction
- The Austen Escape byCall Number: F ReayISBN: 9780718078096Publication Date: 2017-11-07Mary Davies finds safety in her ordered and productive life. Working as an engineer, she genuinely enjoys her job and her colleagues. But something is missing. When Mary's estranged childhood friend, Isabel Dwyer offers her a two-week stay in a gorgeous manor house in England, she reluctantly agrees. But Mary gets more than she bargained for when Isabel loses her memory and fully believes she lives in Jane Austen's Bath.
- Bonfire byCall Number: F RitterISBN: 9781524759841Publication Date: 2017-11-07It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of her small-town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands. But when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack.
- Darker byCall Number: F JamesISBN: 9780385543910Publication Date: 2017-11-28E L James revisits the world of Fifty Shades with a deeper and darker take on the love story that has enthralled millions of readers around the globe.
- Debriefing byCall Number: Short Stories SontagISBN: 9780374100759Publication Date: 2017-11-14A collection of one of our most powerful intellectual's short fiction Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life. The book ranges from allegory to parable to autobiography and shows her wrestling with problems not assimilar to the essay, her more customary mode.
- Hunter Killer byCall Number: F PoyerISBN: 9781250097958Publication Date: 2017-11-28The United States stands nearly alone in its determination to fight, rather than give into the expansionist demands of the aggressive new "People's Empire." The naval and air forces of the Associated Powers - China, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea - have used advanced technology and tactical nuclear weapons to devastate America's fleet in the Pacific, while its massive army forced humiliating surrenders on Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and other crucial allies.
- If We Make It Home byCall Number: F NelsonISBN: 9780825444951Publication Date: 2017-09-26When four college friends graduated from the University of Northwest Oregon, they vow to stay connected. But they haven't spoken in twenty-five years. But against all odds, three of them have found themselves back in the same place--at their alma mater,. When they discover their fourth friend, Hope, has died, Jenna, Ireland, and Vicky decide to embark on a wilderness adventure to honor her memory. They never bargained for the dangers they face in an unforgiving wilderness. Now they'll have to work together if they hope to make it home alive.
- The Last Man in Europe byCall Number: F GloverISBN: 9781468315912Publication Date: 2017-11-14April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work: Nineteen Eighty-Four. Forty-three years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy--the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century have threatened. Completing the book is an urgent challenge, a race against death.
- The Library at the Edge of the World byCall Number: F Hayes-McCoyISBN: 9780062663726Publication Date: 2017-11-14As she drives her mobile library van between villages of Ireland's West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she's back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother's retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, that, as the local librarian, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip.
- The Missing byCall Number: F TaylorISBN: 9780062673534Publication Date: 2017-11-07You love your family. They make you feel safe. You trust them. Or do you...? When fifteen-year-old Billy Wilkinson goes missing in the middle of the night, his mother, Claire Wilkinson, blames herself. She's not the only one. There isn't a single member of Billy's family that doesn't feel guilty. But the Wilkinsons are so used to keeping secrets from one another that it isn't until six months later, after an appeal for information goes horribly wrong, that the truth begins to surface.
- Mrs. Osmond byCall Number: F BanvilleISBN: 9780451493422Publication Date: 2017-11-07From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, a dazzling and audacious new novel that extends the story of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, into unexpected territory.
- The Paris Secret byCall Number: F SwanISBN: 9780062672827Publication Date: 2017-11-14When high-powered fine art agent Flora Sykes is called in to assess objets d'art in a Paris apartment that has been abandoned since WWII, she is skeptical at first--until she discovers that the treasure trove of paintings is myriad...and priceless. The powerful Vermeil family to whom they belong is eager to learn more and asks Flora to trace the history of each painting. But she soon realizes there is more to this project than first appears.
- The Quantum Spy byCall Number: F IgnatiusISBN: 9780393254150Publication Date: 2017-11-07A hyper-fast quantum computer is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb; whoever possesses one will be able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. The winner of the race to build the world's first quantum machine will attain global dominance for generations to come. The question is, who will cross the finish line first: the U.S. or China?
- The Revolution of Marina M. byCall Number: F FitchISBN: 9780316022064Publication Date: 2017-11-07St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn.
- Someone You Love Is Gone byCall Number: F BasranISBN: 9780062674609Publication Date: 2017-11-07Simran's mother has died but is not gone. Haunted by her mother's spirit and memories of the past, she struggles to make sense of her world. Faced with disillusion in her marriage, growing distance from her daughter and sister, and the return of her long-estranged brother, she is troubled by questions to which she has no answers.
- Strangers in Budapest byCall Number: F KeenerISBN: 9781616204976Publication Date: 2017-11-14Budapest: gorgeous city of secrets, with ties to a shadowy, bloody past. It is to this enigmatic European capital that a young American couple, Annie and Will, move from Boston with their infant son shortly after the fall of the Communist regime. Eight months after their move, their efforts to assimilate are thrown into turmoil when they receive a message from friends in the US asking that they check up on an elderly man, a fiercely independent Jewish American WWII veteran who helped free Hungarian Jews from a Nazi prison camp.
- Three Days and a Life byCall Number: F LemaitreISBN: 9781681441788Publication Date: 2017-11-07In 1999, in a small town in France, twelve-year-old Antoine Courtin accidentally kills a young boy. Panicked, he conceals the body and to his relief he is never suspected. More than a decade later, Antoine is living in Paris, now a young doctor with a fiancee and a promising future. On a rare trip home, Antoine sleeps with a beautiful young woman from his past. She shows up pregnant in Paris a few months later, insisting that they marry. Meanwhile, the newly discovered body of Antoine's childhood victim means that the case has been reopened.